[plug] Turning an out of date PC into a linux home entertainment thingymabob?

[William Kenworthy]

An nvidia 5200 is $77 at Austins (mine cost $65 some weeks back I think)
Card does DVI, and XvMC which can help with the cpu loading.  I am
currently using it on a monitor as I configure the system again
(watching TV now, I am almost back to the point where I had a HW
failure!)

DBV-T works fine with the Fusion card I have.  I have an old analog
BT848 card for analogTV and its not good at all - try and get one with
an on-board encoder but they are expensive.

BillK

On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 21:12 +0800, Ari Finander wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Holland" <myk.list at westnet.com.au>
> To: plug at plug.org.au
> Subject: Re: [plug] Turning an out of date PC into a linux home entertainment	thingymabob?
> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 09:09:40 +0800
> 
> > 
> > Ari,
> > consider the noise  problem.
> 
> No noise problem: CPU and case fans are the Vantec Stealth 80mm model.
> 
> > Those XPs are hot, noisy boxes. Can 
> > you underclock it and slow down the fans?
> >     $100 could get you a (used?) TV-out VGA card, and a TV-capture card
> > with remote. I think most TV cards work fine with Linux.
> 
> I think looking into this should be my first step. I've seen new ones for significantly less than $100, IIRC
> 
> 
> > 
> >    However, why go to all that trouble on outdated technology?
> > Digital TV cards are cheap now, and let you record the actual
> > broadcast signal.
> 
> I thought there were a good many on the market now that did both anaologue and digital TV.
> 
> >
> >    Anyway, its all in the PLUG list archives.
> > 
> > Alternatively, spend the hundred bucks on a DVD player with DivX/XviD.
> > They also play MP3s, about 60 hours to a DVD.
> 
> I have hundreds of gigabytes of movies and music on my server. I like this because it lets me get away from the CDs and DVDs and constantly searching for them etc etc.
> 
> 
> Ari
> 
> 
-- 
William Kenworthy <billk at iinet.net.au>
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